How STAR TREK TIMELINES Brings Every Character into the Game

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After a day of running to and fro through the Javits Center trying to cover press for all sorts of TV shows and comic books at New York Comic Con, I was looking forward to being able to sit down. With my press lounge coffee in hand, I was able to do just that, while I chatted about Star Trek for a little with Disruptor Beam’s Rich Gallup. After I spotted him in his bright yellow Captain Kirk hoodie, Rich and I settled in at a table on the top floor of the convention center, and he broke out his iPad to show me Disruptor Beam’s new game, Star Trek Timelines.

It was refreshing that Rich started our chat with his own questions for me.”How much do you know about Star Trek?” he asked, gauging how much explaining he’d have to do. I told him about my youthful following of The Next Generation, my falling-off-period with Voyager, and my re-discovery of the original series some years after that. Rich reassured me that he and I were on about the same level of Star Trek fandom, and we dove into the Star Trek Timelines game.

“Star Trek Timelines takes characters from all of these different Star Trek properties, except for the animated series and the Abrams films, and has them all collide in one universe due to an anomaly in space. Everyone’s favorite omnipotent being, Q, acts as the narrator for the game. We actually worked very closely with John de Lancie for story meetings, and he helped us with figuring out things like the player’s motivations, Q’s motivation, and building the actual story behind the anomaly.”

The first bit of the game Rich showed off was the opening, which sets up the concept and quickly turns into a ship battle against the Romulans. As players continue on in the game and collect more characters from the franchise to populate their ship crew, they are able to utilize different perks and abilities offered from those characters. “This shows that advanced players will want to pay attention to who they chose for each battle station on their bridge in order to build a unique style during ship battle,” Rich explained.

As we continued on in the demonstration, Rich highlighted each of the major aspects of the game. During away missions, players choose three members of an away team in order to advance through the storied missions. Each character in the game is given traits that are specifically built for them, and those traits determine how well an away team does at navigating a mission. This allows for missions to be approached in different ways while still having the potential to be successfully completed. The last piece of the game involves sending characters off on timed missions on their own to gain resources and other valuable items. Players of the Assassins Creed franchise will be quite familiar with this type of side-mission mechanic already.

The game has stunning visuals, with rich color and crisp detail. Everything feels very authentic to the Star Trek experience. This extends beyond just the look of the game, though, since the sound work is all pulled directly from the shows. “The great thing about working with CBS,” explained Rich, ” was that we had the ability to go to them and point out specific lines of dialogue, or sounds, we wanted to use from an episode, and they would then contact their sound lab to get it. The sound lab would be able to take out music, and sound effects, and all of that, so we could take the bit of dialogue and drop it into the game sounding clean. This essentially made it so we had the entirely of Star Trek as voice actors on our game.”

Star Trek Timelines feels like the mobile game that Star Trek fans deserve. It pays a lot of respect to the beloved franchise while fitting into the mobile gaming arena that won’t scare away people who aren’t as familiar with the shows and movies. The game is both beautiful to look at and listen to, simple enough to understand at first play through, and offers plenty for people to try and master along the way. I know I will be excited to beam aboard when the game finally launches.

Star Trek Timelines is currently expected to be launching on iOS and Android before the end of the year. Looking forward joining your favorite captains in the Federation? Let us know in the comments below.